Technical Field
The technical field relates to a printing apparatus and more particularly relates to a three-dimensional printing apparatus and a printing method thereof.
Description of Related Art
As technology advanced in the recent years, many methods that utilize additive manufacturing technology (e.g., layer-by-layer model construction) to build three-dimensional (3D) physical models have been proposed. Generally speaking, the additive manufacturing technology is to transfer data of the design of a 3D model, which is constructed by software, such as computer aided design (CAD), to multiple thin (quasi-two-dimensional) cross-sectional layers that are stacked in sequence. In the meantime, many techniques for forming thin cross-sectional layers are also proposed. For example, a printing module of a printing apparatus is usually configured to move above a base along an XY plane according to spatial coordinates XYZ constructed according to the design data of the 3D model, so as to use a construction material to form shapes of the cross-sectional layers correctly.
Take the technique of forming a three-dimensional object by curing the construction material with a light source for example, the printing module is adapted to be immersed in a liquid-form nation material contained in a tank, and a light source module is used to irradiate the liquid-formation material, used as the construction material, on the XY plane, so as to cure the liquid-formation material and stack it on a movable platform. Accordingly, by moving the movable platform layer by layer along the Z axis direction, the liquid-formation material can be gradually cured and stacked to form the three-dimensional object. According to the conventional technology, the irradiation range of the light source module needs to cover the entire formation surface of the movable platform, such that the light can be provided to every part of the formation surface of the movable platform for curing the liquid-formation material between the movable platform and the bottom of the tank. Thus, it is known that, for a three-dimensional object that is large in size or a movable platform that has a large area, the irradiation range of the light source module needs to be improved, so as to completely print the three-dimensional object. However, no matter the light source module is a point light source or a planar light source, the increase of the irradiation range would certainly raise the production costs of the three-dimensional printing apparatus and increase the galvanometer complexity of the light source module.